Go! Go! Mister Chickums

Genre: Platformer / Arcade

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

.

Review:

(Note: Review code provided by the kind folks at com8com1 Software)

Go! Go! Mister Chickums is a family-friendly Arcade-style Platformer released in 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. This game has players taking the role of the titular Mister Chickums, a bird who has had his many eggs stolen and is now going stage-by-stage to retrieve them and return them to his nest.

The presentation here makes use of 2D pixel art visuals that are wonderfully nostalgic, harkening back to the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. This is joined by chiptune music that suited the game well enough, but that I started finding to be a bit abrasive before too long.

Mister Chickums evokes classic single-screen Platformers of the early days of the genre in Arcades, being vaguely reminiscent of games like Bubble Bobble and the original Mario Bros. (before the “Super” games). In nearly all of the game’s 100 levels, players are tasked with collecting eggs floating around the level and return them to a nest. You’ll need to avoid getting hit by enemies, and if you take too long you’ll be chased by a nasty little Grim Reaper-style character, but largely that’s the gist of it.

The core gameplay here is fairly simple and straightforward, but it’s complicated by this game’s physics. Personally, I think this is one of this game’s worst qualities, because the physics of this game don’t feel natural and can easily mess you up. Whenever you pick up an egg, you’ll be encumbered by it reducing your jump to one that barely clears the ground. While this added caveat makes sense, it’s frustrating because you can pick up eggs without intending to, simply by bumping into them, leaving you struggling to escape a difficult situation you would be able to easily jump out of if you weren’t loaded down with egg.

Another issue is that while moving around and jumping in this game generally feels pretty good, landing on an enemy springboards you upward even if you used the tiniest hop to leap on them, possibly catapulting you into danger when you were trying to be careful.

I should note that when holding eggs, they double as weapons that you can aim with the right stick and fling at enemies, but they barely get any vertical clearance and bounce horizontally for quite a long while, and you’ll need to scurry after a tossed egg if you want to pick it up again, as they reset to their original position extremely quickly when not being held.

I should also mention that one exception to the game’s usual level structure are occasional boss battles, which seem to consist of bonking an enemy three times with eggs, something I found to be so easy I could often clear these boss battles within seconds.

All of these issues aren’t so terrible that they ruin the game, but they feel “off” enough that they collectively make it so that you’ll bounce back and forth between a game that is generally quite easy, to moments when you get repeatedly killed by misjudgments caused by the game’s unusual physics.

But more than the unexpected deaths, these game physics issues mess with the general feel of the game – unintentionally grabbing an egg slows you down and leaves jumps feeling unsatisfying, tossing eggs at an enemy feels less like using a fun weapon and more like taking an action that often feels necessary (either to damage an enemy or offload the egg) but that comes attached to the knowledge that you’ll need to either collect the egg again or hoof it over to wherever it finally lands (often on the other side of the screen).

All of this results in making Go! Go! Mister Chickums an uneven game, one that looks and feels great when things are going well, but that has some unintuitive elements that take some time getting used to. For fans of classic Arcade-style Platformers this is still an enjoyable and fairly original take on the genre, but its odd quirks mean that it won’t be for everyone.

tl;dr – Go! Go! Mister Chickums is a family-friendly Arcade-style Platformer in the vein of Arcade classics like Bubble Bobble and the original Mario Bros., with players taking the role of a bird returning eggs to a nest. While this is a decent take on the genre, it’s an uneven one, with the gameplay bouncing between satisfying and unintuitive, making for difficulty spikes and dips. Fans of retro-style Platformers may still find this worth trying out, but this won’t be a game for everyone.

Grade: B-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Johannes, Jaka, Jared Wark, Gabriel Coronad-Medina, Francis Obst, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}